How a Video Game is Using Children for Personal Benefit
No, not as customers — as something far, far, worse.
Alright, you clicked, you’re reading, let me get straight to the point —
ROBLOX is a multi-billion dollar corporation behind the game of the same name. It’s been nominated for awards, has millions upon millions of players, and even has its own TOY LINE.
You might know where this is headed since it’s been part of a fair share of controversy for a while, but if you don’t — you’re in for a very wild ride.
For those who haven’t heard of it, as said above — ROBLOX is a worldwide phenomenon. It’s popular in tons of countries, is available in multiple languages, and most importantly… it’s multiplayer.
Millions of children around the world every day log onto this site and play games with their friends, but it’s not ROBLOX that makes these games…
it’s the fans.
That’s what makes it so interesting, ROBLOX themselves aren’t creating these video games, it’s their audience, making ROBLOX merely just a hosting platform.
This wouldn’t be so messed up if they didn’t promise real cash for creating these video games within their platform.
The ROBLOX DevEx system is what players use to get their money, but they can’t earn it directly, they first have get 50,000 of what ROBLOX’s currency is. Robux. In order to get this, other players have to spend their hard-earned money in these games for in-game items, such as power-ups, boosts, or more currency within that game.
Now, first of all, Robux is earned through real money and has to be spent in games in order for the developer themselves to earn a sliver of it back.
According to exchange rates, 99 Robux is 99 cents, 499 is $4.99, and so on — so 1 Robux is roughly 1 cent, so when these developers do hit the 50,000 goal, they should get $500 back, right?
Nope. They get $125.
That is the worst exchange rates of all hosting platforms, yet this one is one of the most popular. Developers only get 25% of what they actually earn, but wait! It’s actually even less than that.
When an item is bought in the game, the developer doesn’t get 100% of the Robux earned, they actually get 70%. So, they’re taxed so much for barely anything in return.
Besides the absolutely horrible exchange rates, at least developers are actually getting people in their game, while on other platforms they’re guaranteed nothing.
That fact above is a lie. Most ROBLOX games on the platform go unheard. The only way to truly grow your game.. is to feed money into the platform.
You have to, first, buy Robux, second, make an advertisement, and third.. place your bid.
The higher the bid, the more likely your ad is to show up on the platform.
For example; as a test a couple of days ago while researching this topic, I placed 100 Robux into an advertisement (roughly $1.00) and roughly 300 people saw the advertisement, and 17 people clicked.
Now, of those 17 who clicked, only 2 played the game.
Le’s say you’re a poor little kid who spent your last Robux on an advertisement in HOPES your game goes big time and is featured by ROBLOX. Only 2 people play your game.
On average, you’re making nothing, and you continue to feed your hard-earned money into this, similar to something like a gambling addiction.
You feed your money, get a payout, and continue until you have nothing left… then you do it all again.
Just a while back, the rates were 100,000 Robux for $250.
Developers were finally sick of the nonsense and asked for higher pay and a better development system. They fed hundreds of thousands of dollars into the website with an ad that had a black background and white text which said ‘#raisedevex’.
ROBLOX contacted them, and sent a big message that in summary said;
“We love your idea. It’s absolutely amazing. It’s a great idea. No.”
So, the developers got angry.
They went back and forth for a while, and ROBLOX helped.
No, they didn’t raise their pay, they made it more accessible, and brought it down to the 50,000 Robux for $125 system I talked about just a while ago.
But wait! If developers are so sick of everything, why don’t they just switch platforms? They’re obviously talented enough to make cash if they can make money on one of the worst free hosting platforms out there.
They can’t. The language that ROBLOX uses is called Lua. It’s a language nobody is looking for except for those looking for ROBLOX developers to help them with their games.
Let’s be honest.
The one way to fix this issue isn’t to raise the pay or hire other developers to work on your game;
It’s to learn C++ and get the HELL out of there.
